She finds that mildly irritating for a whole different set of reasons, but it's such an improvement over the alternative that she lets it be. She's very careful not to seem as though she's taking advantage of her new-found position. She demands nothing, and makes only a few careful, diffident suggestions. This will not last forever; no need to burn bridges.
And of course, whenever she receives an email from the Slayer, she responds promptly.
Alli's eyes light up. "Mooooooom?" she wheedles. "If there's extra, caaaaan I? Pretty please?"
"If you put salt in the punch, I will not stake you, but I will tell a chaperone who did it."
"Spoilsport," Alli says, not looking terribly crushed. "All you, date lady. Let me know if you need help with anything."
Soph sets up a large rhinestone and several little sachets of herbs and a few marks in charcoal on the tiles of the floor, and sits, and pulls out her cheat sheet and starts chanting.
Alli dumps her punch into the sink, dries out the cup and pours the salt out from her collection of baggies into the cup. This will be, in her opinion, at least slightly easier to get at for emergency throwing-at-ghost reasons.
Prom-related sounds may be heard, as may boys grumbling about the "Out of Order" sign on the door to the bathroom that Bella placed.
True, as it happens.
"This is your date?" says the ghost skeptically. "Really."
"Okay, seriously. When did this school get so damn homophobic?" Alli asks her, huffing. Focus on me, please. "Why can I not bring a girl as a date?! I like my date! She's a great date! I got her flowers that matched her dress and everything!"
"And you," says Minnie, "don't you even have a friend to pretend for you?"
"Maybe he's gone back to the car to replace a broken shoelace. You don't know. Are you going to try to kill me just in case?"
"What's his name?" challenges Minnie.
"John."
"John," Minnie scoffs. "You made that up."
"People are really sometimes named John."
"John Cleese? John Legend? John Mayer, curses be upon his name?" Alli suggests helpfully.
"While you are in a state of uncertainty about whether I have a date do you actually want to strangle me?" wonders Bella.
"That's - not the point!"
"What is the point?"
"I think you're lying?"
"But maybe I'm not. Can you tell?"
"Argh!"
"Man, if you have a lie detector, can I borrow it?" Alli asks innocently. "My sister is being a shit about the holidays again, I want to call her out on it."
"...No."
"Do you want to want to strangle me?"
"Not really. I just, I get mad."
"And you would want to strangle me if you decided for sure that John wasn't real."
"Yeah."
"And you're asking about him anyway."
"I..."
"You think you're awfully cute, don't you," Minnie snarls at Alli. "You think -"
"Minnie," says Bella. "The guy who killed you is almost certainly dead. Even if it wasn't a satisfying death, even if he just shriveled up in a nursing home, he's gone. You're still here."
"But he killed me," howls Minnie. Some of the sinks turn on.
Bella turns them off. "But you're still here. You can talk. You can learn things. You can imagine John exists enough not to try to kill me for being luckier than you."
"So he's not -"
"He's in the car looking for spare shoelaces. Maybe he couldn't find the ones he thought were in there and he's making a run to the store," lies Bella. "You could decide you don't believe me and then something about the way you became a ghost would force you to try to kill me."
"I just get mad."
"I know. So believe me about John, okay?"
Minnie growls.
"Minnie, he's gone. He's gone. He doesn't even get to watch a prom once a year."
Minnie sobs into her hands.
"What did you do?" Minnie asks.
"Soph is the expert," murmurs Bella. "Soph?"
Minnie blinks at her.
"Uh," says Soph, "if the rhinestone moves, you go with it. The rhinestone exists all the time and prom doesn't, so you don't - wink out, when prom's over -"
"Oh my god!" squeals Minnie.
"- and the rhinestone doesn't have anything to do with how you died so it might make it so you don't, uh, get so mad. Um, Bella."